Customers continue to demand increasing flexibility and control of their media viewing experiences. Whereas television viewing traditionally involved sitting in front of a television set during a live broadcast of a program being viewed, modern television viewers now expect the ability to control the time as well as the location of their media viewing experience. To that end, numerous devices such as digital video recorders, placeshifting devices, and any number of media streaming systems have been developed with widespread consumer adoption and approval. Many television viewers now have home entertainment systems that incorporate many different audio/video components such as set top boxes, media players, audio/video receivers, digital video recorders and the like. Currently, each of these different devices is typically plugged into a different port of a conventional television set in the viewer's home.
As the home entertainment system incorporates more and more features and components, however, the complexity of the system can create several issues. Simply obtaining a desired program from any one component may involve separately controlling the television, an integrated video receiver, a program source, and/or any number of other devices. If the selected content is to be placeshifted to a mobile phone or other remote device, controlling the system becomes even more complicated and difficult.
Various attempts at video integration have been attempted, but all have met with limited success. So-called “universal remote controls”, for example, have had difficulty in practice controlling multiple components of a home entertainment system, particularly as components evolve away from traditional infrared controls. Other types of integrated video switching devices have been attempted with various levels of success.
It nevertheless remains desirable to improve the aggregation and control of the wide variety of media content that is available from a consumer's home entertainment system. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.